BSD copyright clause
by Steve Grubb
Hello,
A GPL'ed project includes some 3 clause BSD licensed files. They include this
line:
* 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Is the term "binary form" referring to the tarball or a compiled application
that uses the file? If it is meant to refer to a compiled app, how do people
typically meet this? Just curious....
Thanks,
-Steve
14 years, 2 months
Proper description of mysql's documentation license?
by Tom Lane
Bug #560181 correctly points out that although mysql's code is
distributed under GPL, the associated documentation is not.
The reporter proposes classifying it as "Redistributable, no
modification permitted", but I thought I'd ask this list about
opinions on the best license tag for it. The doc license looks
like this:
Copyright 1997-2008 MySQL AB, 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
This documentation is NOT distributed under a GPL license. Use of this
documentation is subject to the following terms: You may create a
printed copy of this documentation solely for your own personal use.
Conversion to other formats is allowed as long as the actual content is
not altered or edited in any way. You shall not publish or distribute
this documentation in any form or on any media, except if you
distribute the documentation in a manner similar to how Sun
disseminates it (that is, electronically for download on a Web site
with the software) or on a CD-ROM or similar medium, provided however
that the documentation is disseminated together with the software on
the same medium. Any other use, such as any dissemination of printed
copies or use of this documentation, in whole or in part, in another
publication, requires the prior written consent from an authorized
representative of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sun Microsystems, Inc. and
MySQL AB reserve any and all rights to this documentation not expressly
granted above.
Also: I am thinking of putting the docs into a separate -docs subpackage
with its own License tag, rather than confusing matters by labeling the
whole package with two very different tags. Any objections to that?
Could the "with the software" bit above be read to prohibit such a
scheme? Plan C would be to drop the docs entirely and just offer a link
to mysql's website, but I don't like that very much ...
regards, tom lane
14 years, 2 months
ftp-0.17-51.fc12 and libreadline
by Julius Davies
Hi,
I see the ftp-0.17-51.fc12.i686.rpm says it's "BSD With Advertising."
This isn't the problem: it's all UC-Berkeley, so it can be relicensed
to remove the "With Advertising" clause.
My question is this:
I also see that ftp links against libreadline.so:
$ ldd ftp-0.17-51.fc12.i686/usr/bin/ftp
libreadline.so.6
Is that okay for BSD code to dynamically link against GPL libraries?
And a footnotes of one more package (rpcbind) that appears to have
wrong info in its RPM license attribute:
rpmquery --info -p rpcbind-0.2.0-4.fc12.i686.rpm
License: GPL
But we can only find BSD3 and BSD4 files inside it:
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/check_bound.c;BSD3;,;0
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/pmap_svc.c;BSD3;,;0
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/rpcbind.c;BSD3;,;0
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/rpcb_stat.c;BSD3;,;0
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/rpcb_svc_4.c;BSD3;,;0
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/rpcb_svc.c;BSD3;,;0
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/rpcb_svc_com.c;BSD3;,;0
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/rpcinfo.c;BSD3;,;0
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/security.c;NONE
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/util.c;BSD4;,;0
rpcbind-0.2.0-4/rpcbind-0.2.0/src/warmstart.c;BSD3;,;0
--
yours,
Julius Davies
250-592-2284 (Home)
250-893-4579 (Mobile)
http://juliusdavies.ca/logging.html
14 years, 2 months
copyright and license notices in media files
by Ben Asselstine
Hi,
I'm finding that media file are not attributed to the same degree that
source code files are. License and copyright notices are often stated
at the file-level for source code files... probably because these
files have a way of migrating to other software packages. Media files
have a way of migrating around too, yet license and copyright
attribution is hardly ever included within the file. Sometimes it's
even impossible to store that kind of information in a media file.
Music files seem to have better attribution than video or images.
It can be difficult to determine who has copyright on an image file
found in a Fedora package. The problem gets worse if a few years pass
and memories fade, and VCS-es migrate. In my opinion these copyright
holes introduce licensing uncertainty, and it serves our Free Software
ecosystem well to attribute files with license and copyright notices.
It can probably be considered as mostly an upstream problem, but there
is also the special case of when a Fedora maintainer adds a media file
to a package. Should there be (or is there already) a policy or
guideline about per-file license and copyright notices? How about a
policy just for Fedora maintainers for any media files they
incorporate into a package?
GNU Savannah (http://sv.gnu.org) enforces copyright and license
notices for new upstream packages that it hosts.
I'm not on the list, so please include me in replies.
Ben
14 years, 2 months
xorg-x11-drv-wacom license
by Peter Hutterer
Hi guys,
During a review of the wacom project I found this gem in most of the
source files (highlights mine):
* This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
* modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
^^ GPL
* as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
* of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
*
* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
* GNU Lesser General Public License for more details.
^^ LGPL
*
* You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
^^ GPL
* along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
* Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307, USA.
So the first paragraph explicitly states that the software is GPLv2+
(and the last paragraph suggests the same). The second paragraph refers
to the LGPL. Ping, the upstream maintainer suggested that it "Must be a
copy/paste error."
The project itself ships the tarballs exclusively with the GPL document.
Back in the day it used to contain a LGPL-licensed part but that part
has since been removed.
I just wanted to double-check that this is in fact counts as GPLv2 or
whether it requires GPLv2 and LGPLv2 or some similar tag.
Also, some advice on whether it is appropriate to correct this error
upstream without legal repercussions would be much appreciated. Both
Ping and I (the two maintainers) agree that GPL is the intended license.
Cheers,
Peter
14 years, 2 months
licensing of private build tools
by Michal Hlavinka
Hi,
I'm looking into ksh package. This package is licensed as CPL. For building
ksh's own tools are required. Upstream have two source tarballs:
1) ast-ksh
2) INIT
First tarball contains only CPL licensed files and is the only source for ksh
itself.
Second tarball is CPL licensed too except one file licensed with ZLIB. This is
used only for build tool, nowhere else.
Is it required to have ZLIB in spec file or not?
Cheers,
Michal
14 years, 2 months
Offering Fedora installation service etc.
by Martin Killmann
Hello everyone,
I'm unsure whether this is the right place to ask, if not, please point
me in the right direction.
We're a server company that sells Linux systems from embedded to big iron,
(http://www.plathome.co.jp/products/server/)
and we also offer Fedora preinstalled on customer request.
Now, the question is whether there are licensing issues we can run into
when offering Fedora preinstallation, support and other services.
Are there any parts of the distribution that are critical, such as
proprietary drivers?
Please advise.
Best regards,
Martin Killmann
Plat'Home
--------------------------------------
Martin Killmann
Plat'Home Co., Ltd.
International Sales
Akihabara Daibiru 9F
1-18-13 Sotokanda, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 101-0021 Japan
E-mail: martin(a)plathome.co.jp
Tel: +81-3-3251-2603 Fax: +81-3-3251-0629
14 years, 2 months
rpm license attribute: abrt, eclipse-cdt, mtools, ortp
by Julius Davies
Hi,
My co-author detected some slight errors in some RPM license
attributes. Errors listed below:
abrt-0.0.11-2.fc12.i686.rpm
License: GPLv2+
---
Our source file scan detected some GPLv2 (strict) files:
abrt-0.0.11/lib/Plugins/Kerneloops.cpp;GPLv2;,;0
abrt-0.0.11/lib/Plugins/KerneloopsReporter.cpp;GPLv2;,;0
abrt-0.0.11/lib/Plugins/KerneloopsScanner.cpp;GPLv2;,;0
abrt-0.0.11/lib/Plugins/KerneloopsSysLog.cpp;GPLv2;,;0
abrt-0.0.11/lib/Utils/copyfd.cpp;GPLv2;,;0
abrt-0.0.11/lib/Utils/logging.cpp;GPLv2;,;0
abrt-0.0.11/lib/Utils/xfuncs.cpp;GPLv2;,;0
abrt-0.0.11/src/Hooks/dumpoops.cpp;GPLv2;,;0
eclipse-cdt-6.0.1-7.fc13.i686.rpm
License: EPL and CPL
---
We are unable to find any source files with CPL, although some
documentation files in the source RPM do specify this license.
mtools-4.0.12-1.fc13.i686.rpm
License: GPLv2+
---
We are unable to find any source files that are GPLv2+. They appear
to all be GPLv3+.
ortp-0.16.1-1.fc13.i686.rpm
License: LGPLv2+ and VSL
---
We're less sure we found a problem with this one, but thought we'd let
you know we're having trouble locating the source of the VSL
licensing.
Thanks very much for clarifying my understanding in that previous
thread about a month ago!
--
yours,
Julius Davies
250-592-2284 (Home)
250-893-4579 (Mobile)
http://juliusdavies.ca/logging.html
14 years, 2 months
Chromium Uninstall Y\N?
by Frank Murphy
Is it ok to keep Chromium+deps installed?
--
Regards,
Frank Murphy
UTF_8 Encoded
14 years, 2 months
[Fwd: Fathead ToS]
by Máirín Duffy
Fat Head is this company that produces large stickers and a few folks
have mentioned wanting to get Fedora logo fathead stickers printed.
John Rose righfully noted their TOS seem a little off. What do you
think?
~m
-------- Forwarded Message --------
http://www.fathead.com/TermsAndConditions.aspx
I didn't read it all but was unsure about this section at least:
"By uploading your image submission, you hereby grant Fathead and its
affiliates and assigns a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free,
worldwide, limited license to use, modify, publicly display, reproduce
and distribute your image submission in any format."
That just sounded preposterous to me. What do you think?
John
14 years, 2 months
